Left and Right Hand Paths

[Jinx]

I've heard the term "the Left Hand Path" around but didn't know what it was, and if there is a Left Hand Path, there must be a Right Hand Path?  But what do they both stand for?

Jinx

[Shadow Wulf]

Right hand path tends to be about advancing your spiritual side, approaching and joining with the divine. Left hand path is more to do with working for the now and is more often associated with the physical realm of things. Exactly how you percieve them though tends to vary between different people to the point where the definitions can get polarised to be completly different or blurred together to be almost the same.

[Leiane]

Hi

I consider the left hand path to be the use of magic to gain power or influence over others. To influence the outcome of an event for a selfish advantage over others (whether you are doing this for yourself or on behalf of another). To intend a malicious outcome to others would involve using the left hand path.

However to stay purely on the right hand path might mean doing nothing much at all as any action might be construed as upsetting the delicate balance of the universe.
Best way is the middle way, not the broad middle way of agreeing with everyone else but rather your very own and personal middle way "the path less trodden". Basically if you know yourself, you know whether what you are thinking or doing is right for you or not and if you know it's wrong it's the left hand path you are on if only temporarily.

love and peace

Leiane

[Cavalorn]

I've heard the term "the Left Hand Path" around but didn't know what it was, and if there is a Left Hand Path, there must be a Right Hand Path?   But what do they both stand for?

There's no one right answer to that, because the terms have been hijacked out of their original context for so very long and re-used to serve so many varied personal/political ends that their 'real' meaning is long since lost.

Tantrism (of the old-fashioned sort) used the term Left Hand Path to mean one thing.
Theosophy used it to mean something else.
Crowley used it to mean something else again.
The Temple of Set, the IOT and various other groups all used it to mean something else yet again.
And now we have the modern condition in which nobody knows what the hell it means because they never bother to specify the context, but various people think they do know.

Here is a post I made ages ago which should explain everything for you!

[Leiane]

Hi Cavalorn

That old post from 2004 was well worth reading,  much more meat on the bone/threads in those days.

love and peace

leiane

[Sethur]

True. Originally (in Tantra) Left-Hand path meant carrying out certain practices that a respectable practitioner would only carry out with his wife, since in the wedding ceremony the woman moves from the right hand side of her husband to the left.
Nowadays, Left-Hand Path means "I have lots of tattoos and piercings".